Corporate governance - Vigil

The acquisition of the Longo’s grocery chain and other strategic shifts helped to increase second-quarter profit for Sobeys owner Empire Company increase, even as shoppers continue to dine out more and buy fewer groceries.

BEX Limited today announces that its board of directors has authorized the repurchase of up to US$20 million of the Company’s common stock.

As exemplified by the attention paid by the business and investor communities to the COP26 event, the last few years have seen a significant change in the understanding of climate change as a material risk to businesses, with government and capital markets responding

The UK’s The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has introduced new listing rules on 3 December, with an aim to boost the growth of the UK stock markets by enhancing its flexibility while ensuring the protection of investors. London hasn’t been able to keep pace with New York in terms of IPOs, and this step to modify the listing rules has come at a time when the US is becoming a hotspot for the listing of UK firms due to comparatively better valuations and share rules in the US

Nestlé  has agreed to reduce its stake in L’Oréal SA in a $10 billion deal that allows the world’s biggest packaged-foods maker to capitalize on a rally in the French beauty giant’s share price.

A blank-check company backed by British billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Group is merging with natural-consumer-products seller Grove Collaborative Inc. to take it public in a deal the companies value at $1.5 billion, the companies said Wednesday.

New CIO appointments, December 2021

Starbucks was dealt a setback Tuesday after a federal labor authority ruled that the tallying of ballots can move ahead in a worker vote on unionizing three of the company’s cafes

The Delaware Chancery Court has recently gotten its first look at SPAC governance in the In Re Multiplan Stockholders Litigation case, which is currently pending. The defendants in the case have essentially argued that the conduct of sponsors and boards should be immune to judicial review when they enter into a merger (or “deSPAC”). That would be an unfortunate result for SPAC shareholders, and in our view the wrong answer under Delaware law

The value of an investment is no longer just about financial returns. A growing number of investors and other corporate stakeholders are calling for their money to go toward stocks or funds that are both profitable over the long term and reflective of their social values.

Today, 30 percent of board of directors members at S&P 500 companies are women, a figure projected to grow in the coming years, according to research by Pay Governance, a premiere board-level executive compensation advisor, which advises the boards of many prominent publicly traded companies.

The flood of everyday Americans into options trading has drawn a skeptical eye from U.S. regulators, who are considering possible rule changes for the era of smartphone brokerage apps.

Canada is racing to close deals for new plants to produce electric-vehicle batteries amid an increasingly heated North America-wide competition for investment in EV manufacturing.

The Saskatchewan Health Authority is not releasing any details surrounding the departure of former chief executive officer Scott Livingstone last week.

On October 13, the Department of Labor (DOL) issued a proposal that would roll back some of the environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing rules that were finalized by the Trump administration at the end of 2020. The Trump administration rules caused uncertainty regarding fiduciaries’ ability to use ESG funds in the retirement plans that they sponsor.

The world’s oldest stock market is on a hot streak. Amsterdam has profited from the upheaval sown by Brexit to surpass London as the busiest European equities market.

The chief executive officers of half a dozen cryptocurrency firms are set to appear before Congress on Wednesday, as lawmakers and regulators wrestle with how to bring the more than $2 trillion market under government oversight.

The offering would be the fifth-largest IPO of the year in the U.S. based on the amount to be raised, according to Nicholas Einhorn, vice president of research at Renaissance Capital.

BlackRock is pulling some $2 trillion of assets out of State Street Corp.’s STT -0.84% safekeeping, a move that will reduce the investing firm’s reliance on a small number of parties and lower the fees it pays for back-office work.

State Street Global Advisors is evolving its proactive and targeted approach to engagement, prioritizing climate change, human capital management (HCM) and diversity equity and inclusion, and expanding its stewardship team

The rising prevalence of ESG disclosure and the laws that mandate it point to a few natural questions. First, it’s important to understand how mandatory or voluntary disclosure affects the investment decision of firms. That is, what are the real investment effects of either voluntary or mandatory ESG disclosure? Second, how do these two separate disclosure regimes compare in terms of efficiency? In other words, when is mandatory ESG disclosure better for shareholders, and vice versa?

The global energy transition could create 170,000 jobs in Alberta and contribute $61 billion to the province’s GDP by 2050, according to a new study released Tuesday by provincial economic development groups.

It’s clear one of the main ways companies will be judged on their ESG strategy is the makeup of their board and C-suite leadership. If their leaders have a history of prioritizing and driving progress in the environmental, social, and corporate governance areas, they have a stronger leg to stand on. If not, they open themselves up to greater scrutiny from customers, employees, and financial markets.